Day: 8th September 2017

This afternoon members of the Touchstones Creative Writing Group had invited me along to facilitate their session and I delivered my brand new workshop.

The importance of writing groups for very many writers, whether novices or very experienced, should not be underestimated. A group like this creates both the space and motivation to write and of course the support of fellow writers and on occasion the support and encouragement of professionals. All of this helps development and also helps writers to extend their range and experience styles and subjects they might nor otherwise have tried.

Today in Touchstones those were exactly the aims of the session and it can be quite challenging to get writers to stretch beyond their confidence zones. It is also highly rewarding for those writers when they find a new approach and create something that even an hour earlier they would not have envisaged. The smiles, thanks and acknowledgments from all of the participants are ample reword for the facilitator (although of course the fee is most welcome).

Using a set of scenarios randomly selected by participants we watched and listened as new work took shape from a completed, well structured, poem to short stories encompassing Yorkshire’s tribal elders, a dodgy regime exiling people to space, being unwittingly stuck in a cupboard in an academic establishment, representing a Neighbourhood Watch and spiritual experiences on a mountaintop. None of these things were included in the original prompts and none were written from the direct experience of the writers. The writers were unanimously surprised by what they had written and very happy to have stepped beyond the realms of personal experience.

It is a measure of the success of a workshop when a participant books the same workshop for their own group so I was particularly pleased to be invited to deliver the “I’m not supposed to be here” workshop in two weeks time for the Langley Writers group.

The group meet monthly at Demesne Community Centre, Langley, Middleton and the session on 23rd September will run from 2.00pm to 4.00pm and all are welcome regardless of experience.